1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink ejecting printer, ink ejecting printing system, ink ejecting printer control method, and a non-transitory recording medium storing an ink ejecting printer control program.
2. Background Art
Ink ejecting printers such as inkjet printers are used for recording images on various recording media such as plain paper, roll paper, and film. Recently, ink ejecting printers are also used for recording images on thick recording media such as corrugated cardboard (including boxes).
There are two methods for ink ejecting printing. One is a so-called serial method, which records images by moving a recording head that includes nozzles in the main scanning direction and ejecting ink droplets to the recording medium. The other is a so-called line method, which records images by keeping a recording head that includes nozzles of recording width stationary while ejecting ink droplets on the recording medium.
Regarding the ink ejecting printers that record images on the thick recording media such as the corrugated cardboard, serial ink ejecting printers are not suitable since the recording medium is voluminous such as the corrugated cardboard and conveyed by conveyance units such as belt conveyors.
Therefore, regarding the ink ejecting printers that record images on the thick recording media such as the corrugated cardboard, the line ink ejecting printers are used conventionally.
The line ink ejecting printers include a recording head on which nozzles are formed over a recording length at least in the main scanning direction perpendicular to the conveyance direction of the thick recording medium such as the corrugated cardboard. The recording head is mounted on a supporting frame member installed on the belt conveyor (the conveyance unit) that transfers the recording medium such as the corrugated cardboard, and clearance between the recording head (i.e., the nozzles) and the recording medium such as the corrugated cardboard conveyed by the belt conveyor is ordinarily about 1 to 2 millimeters.
The ink ejecting printers perform dummy ejection appropriately to prevent nozzles from drying out or plugging up. In this case, the serial ink ejecting printers move the recording head to a position where a cap is located at a non-recording area in the main scanning direction and perform dummy ejection after capping the recording head with the cap.
However, line ink ejecting printers do not have a configuration that moves the recording head in the main scanning direction. Therefore, it is not possible to perform dummy ejection.
To cope with this issue, conventionally line ink ejecting printers perform dummy ejection during intervals between successive prints. In this case, basically, the line ink ejecting printers perform dummy ejection by moving a cap member that is long in the main scanning direction from a downstream side lower than a passing position of the recording medium toward the recording head and covering the recording head with the cap member.